1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of performing speech recognition. The present invention is directed to performing speech recognition for an internet appliance at a remotely located speech recognition application.
2. Related Art
In a technology that generates computers that are bigger, faster, more complicated and expensive, a growing market of low cost and specialized computer systems that are part of a larger networked system has emerged. One of the new categories of computer systems is the xe2x80x9cinternet appliancexe2x80x9d.
An internet appliance is an embedded electronic system at the edge of the Internet. The internet appliance is inexpensive, simple to use, and usually designed to perform a dedicated or narrow range of functions. It maintains its low cost by minimizing hardware resources, including its memory capacity, processor power, and size. Some internet appliances are portable. Since these devices are connected to a network, such as the Internet, these internet appliances rely on a remote computer with its associated features to do any function that a computer may do, including storage of data and performance of an application.
The internet appliance focuses on one particular function to simplify operations, maximize convenience, and reduce cost. For example, an internet appliance may provide limited access to the Internet by featuring selected web sites, one of which could be a web site providing weather information. As selected by the user, the internet appliance might continually display updated weather information with data from the specific weather web site for any particular area without any further input from the user.
Internet appliances will eventually become more prevalent throughout the home or business in performing numerous tasks. Virtually any household appliance that can incorporate a digital interface can be an internet appliance. Complex functions such as heating and cooling of the home interior, answering and recording telephone messages, sprinkling the yard, securing the home with a security system, accessing the Internet, etc., or more simplistic functions such as making coffee or toast can be controlled using an internet appliance.
Previously, internet appliances had limited speech recognition capabilities. FIG. 1 shows an electronic device 100 with speech recognition capabilities. Device 100 needs sophisticated hardware in order to run the algorithms needed for speech recognition. As such, device 100 is typically a stand-alone personal computer with a fast digital signal processor 115 to perform the speech recognition application 130 embedded within device 100 to maximize real time response times. Speech is inputted into voice recorder 110 in analog form. A converter 125 converts the analog signal to digital form whereupon the digital signal processor 115 operates the speech recognition application 130 to translate the input into text form that is stored in memory 120 and viewed at the display 105.
Because of its simplistic construction and emphasis on reducing cost by limiting the hardware attached to it, an internet appliance would have limited capability to independently run a speech recognition application without excessively increasing the size, power, and cost of the internet appliance.
FIG. 2 shows a network architecture 200 for performing speech recognition that is explained by Z. Tu and P. Loizou in their paper, xe2x80x9cSpeech Recognition Over the Internet Using Java,xe2x80x9d IEEE ICASSP 1999, Phoenix, Ariz. This architecture requires that the voice data is recorded at the appliance 205 and sent through a communication link 210 to the Internet Service Provider 220, and then over the Internet 225 to the proxy server 230. The proxy server 230 is pointed at a web site, or URL address, having a digital signal processor disposed therein that runs a speech recognition application. The speech recognition application translates the input voice data into text. Results from the speech recognition application are then sent back over the same communications network to the internet appliance 205.
This network architecture 200 overcomes the problem of locating the speech recognition application along with the necessary hardware to run the application on the internet appliance 205 by utilizing a world wide web browser located on appliance 205 to do speech recognition via a remote proxy server 230 pointed at a web site with a speech recognition application disposed therein. However, the internet appliance requires a web browser which adds undesirable cost and complexity to the appliance. A further disadvantage to this architecture is the inconvenience of pointing the browser to the specific web site that contains the speech recognition application. Yet another disadvantage is the inherent losses and delays associated with the Internet architecture. Since the web site is located within the Internet, the end to end round trip response time will be affected by queuing delays within the network switches, available bandwidth, packet reassembly delays, and processing delays by the speech recognition application. These previous delay limitations may also result in losses of data.
Thus, a need exists to provide an efficient and cost-effective method and system for performing speech recognition for an Internet appliance.
The present invention provides a method and system for performing speech recognition for an internet appliance using a remotely located speech recognition application. Specifically, a method and system for performing speech recognition is provided such that the internet appliance can receive and execute sophisticated verbal commands. Additionally, the present invention allows for inexpensive and easy to operate internet appliances. Also, the present invention provides a method and system for performing speech recognition that is separate from an internet appliance. Moreover, the present invention provides a method and system for performing speech recognition for an internet appliance with real time response characteristics.
The present invention provides these advantages and others not specifically mentioned above but described in the sections to follow. Specifically, the present invention discloses a method and system for performing speech recognition for an internet appliance using a remotely located speech recognition application. The invention includes an internet appliance that is connected through a network with either a stand-alone computer or a server computer located at the Internet Service Provider. Verbal commands directed to an internet appliance are received as analog signals and converted to digital signals. The digital signals are remotely translated into a set of instructions by a dedicated hardware device or a software program that operates a speech recognition application at either a stand-alone computer or server computer located at an Internet Service Provider in a form recognizable by the internet appliance. The internet appliance receives and executes the translated instructions.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after having read the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments which are illustrated in the various drawing figures.